THE RE-PRESENTATION OF AN INDIAN IDENTITY BY SOUTH AFRICAN PRINT MEDIA: A CASE STUDY OF THE LEADER - 1 APRIL-25 APRIL 1994. .i N. R. Bramdaw 941355314 Supervisor: Dr. R. E. Teer-Tomaselli Submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of Natal, Durban, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Master of Arts (Cultural and Media Studies) (Coursework). 1 - ... DECLARATION I I declare that this is my own unaided work, 11', except for the acknowledged supervision and referenced citations. ,I It has not been submitted for any previous degree at any university. I Date: December 1995 Name: N. R. Bramdaw Signature: ~1#10 2 fa ~ ~ ~ i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1a ~ , ~a The author wishes to thank the following people who helped develop and refine this [ dissertation. Primary acknowledgement goes to the Editor and Staff of The Leader, who ~ granted access to the materials under discussion. Thanks also go to Dr. R. E. Teer-Tomaselli ~ for her constructive criticism during her supervision of this work. The writer also wishes to fl acknowledge the 1995 Masters and Honours classes at the Centre for Cultural and Media ~ Studies (CCMS) for their input into the drafts of this dissertation. I am especially grateful to ~ the staff of the Division of Language Usage (DLU) at the University of Durban-Westville (UD­ W) who made available materials on discourse analysis, and more importantly, managed to ~ grant me generous leave whenever I needed it. For assistance with the layout of this project, a f word of thanks goes to M. Moodley. Finally, a word of gratitude to K. Moodley and 1. Mackraj ~ ~ for their support. Needless to say, any shortcomings in this work should not be seen as a reflection on any of the above persons. 3 ABSTRACT In the Kwa-Zulu Natal context, a lot of attention has been paid to the construction of Zulu ethnicity in the political and discursive spheres. Less attention has been paid however to the construction ofIndian ethnicity in this region. This proj ect will explore the exclusivist construction of an Indian ethnic identity by an Indian-owned print medium in this geographical context during the time of the 1994 South African elections, when various political parties fought for what has been called the "Indian vote". It will attempt to point out that the notion of ethnic identity offered by this medium to its readers does not actually challenge those offered to the community by the old South African state. In grounding the analysis of the editions under discussion in a framework developed by ~. ,Norman Fairclough, this study draws heavily on a theoretical continuum developed by Antonio 00,' Gramsci and Louis Althusser. It is in such a theoretical context that Fairclough has developed the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). By bringing such a methodology to bear on the texts under analysis, the study hopes to develop an understanding ofIndian ethnicity in this region which suggests that it is an extremely problematic construct. 4 ~ J 3 :3 i 3 8 ABBREVIATIONS 8 ; 3 AMP Africa Muslim Party 3 ADM African Democratic Movement Party 3 ANC African National Congress 3 AWB Afrikaner Weerstands Beweeging 3 CDA Critical Discourse Analysis 8 DP Democratic Party ~ DIMES Durban Integrated Municipal Employees Society ~ FW F. W. de Klerk ~ i IEC Independent Electoral Commission ~ IFP Inkatha Freedom Party ~ KlSS Keep It Simple Stupid Party ~ MF Minority Front Member of Parliament ~ MP NIC Natal Indian Congress r~ ~ NP National Party NSL National Soccer League =~ NUM New Unity Movement ~ = SABC South African Broadcasting Corporation =- =~ = [~ 5 ~ ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction and Theoretical Contextualisation .................7 2. A Problematics of Representation ............................ 11 3. Identity and Ethnicity ..................................... 15 4. The Print Media .........................................21 5. Methodology ...........................................28 6. Analysis ...............................................31 7. Conclusion .............................................50 8. Endnotes ...............................................55 9. Bibliography ............................................61 6 INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL CONTEXTUALISATION For the uninformed, [They Came from the East] provides an insight into a. group of people making up a specific, an exclusive racial category in keeping with the notion of South Africa comprising a mosaic of ethnic groups. Precisely because the video deals with the Indian community as a homogeneous, clearly defined group, it is giving credibility to and perpetuating this erroneous and destructive mosaic theory.... [Indians] are seen as one separate ethnic component with a social, economic and political life of its own and seemingly able to function without any apparent contact with the balance of South Africa's people .... The end result, of course, is to give credit to the State's version of separate but equal. The question then is, why deal with Indians as a separate group and not as a part of a dynamic South Africa? [Tomaselli et al: 1986:41]. The stereotype - the 'black', the 'Indian', the 'native', the 'other' - collapses beneath the weight of ... complexity. Stretched between histories it tears, becomes piecemeal...Here, in a post-colonial genealogy ofmodemity, the tension, the gap, between different symbolic regimes and their shared occupation of the same signs simultaneously draws us into historical specificity and potential communalities [Homi Bhabha quoted in lain Chambers:1991:14]. This project will attempt to address two interrelated questions which have as their common aim the interrogation of the metanarrative of a consistent South African Indian identity. In '.- exploring these questions it seeks further to decentre the notion of an essentialist Indian ethnic subjectivity and implode the myth of the South African Indian cultural isolate that Keyan Tomaselli et al identify in ethnographic documentary modes of discourse on Indianness. In addition, this study attempts to address a particular lacuna in the critique of They Came from the East quoted above. While Tomaselli et al are correct in that the ethnographic representation ofIndians in the documentary structures in many absences, the paper itself tends to structure out attempts by Indians to represent themselves in various media. By confronting this particular absence, it is hoped that this study would illustrate the role of signification systems within the Indian community that have depended far too uncritically on a problematic "historical specificity" and has largely ignored the "potential communalities" to which Bhabha refers. This would also be an attempt, of course, to offer a reading of identity which runs against the grain of The Leader and the representations of such a largely "imagined 7 community" by Indians themselves. These questions are: a. to what extent is such an essentialist ethnic identity constructed by the old South African state or, as it has come to be called, an "administrative identity"? [See for example, Bekker: 1993.] b. to what extent is such an identity the construction of the subject community itself in relation to the project of the old South African state? ,'fo attempt to answer these questions, it is necessary to accept that the idea of Indianness (like notions of Zuluness or J ewishness etc.) is a constructed one. As Edward Said [I] has pointed out in a related but further reaching project, the construction of the Orient by the West has been a problematic activity which has been informed by many hegemonic, ideological and material interests. Similarly, one could argue that as a discursive construct, the notion of South African Tndianness is produced in the realm of daily life, in the realm of the family, in the realm of the school, in the realm of the state and the realm of subjects in coming to terms with these constructions. If we borrow more extensively from Louis Althusser we could argue that these arenas meet in the realm of subjectivity. It is important to note that Althusser was not particularly interested in the notion of ethnicity. In dealing with class and subjectivity, however, his project has an affinity with this one in that both are concerned with the impact of ideology and discourse on the subject. Althusser, of course, deploys the term ideology in a specifically postmarxist context in relation to class formations and the subject. Ideology in this study will refer to the general belief systems of the subject community under discussion in relation to identity and the construction of ethnicity by an Indian print medium. In addition, as Norman Fairclough points out, Althusser is of some value as a theorist of ideology for the following reasons: First, the claim that it [ideology] has a material existence in the practices of institutions, which opens up the way to investigating discursive practices as material forms of ideology. Second the claim that ideology 'interpellates' subjects ... Third, the claim that 'ideological state apparatuses' (institutions such as education and the media) are both sites of and stakes in class struggle, which points to struggle in and over discourses a focus for an ideologically­ oriented discourse analysis [Fairclough:1992:87]. 8 This project will explore the notion that South African Indian ethnic consciousness is a form of 'false consciousness'. It is false in that, in the South African context, the community represented in and by The Leader, for example, is framed within discursive and ideological fields